


Daughter of Light, Son of Darkness

by Merfilly



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Demigods, Force Bond (Star Wars), Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-26 06:15:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9871121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: Ahsoka walked away from Anakin, and it hurt, especially when she shut down all contact, basically vanishing. Only, as he comes back from finding Echo, he learns not all is at is seemed.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline hijinks: choosing to put Echo's recovery by Anakin and the 501st BEFORE Tup had his incident. Because I want my clones to have happy endings. Not truly plot pertinent, but wanted to explain that was a deliberate choice.

When Ahsoka had vanished so completely after the trial, Anakin had bitterly written her off as one more person that he should never have opened his heart to. She might still be alive, but it felt as much like she was dead to him as anything else. The bond had gone dark less than an hour after she closed his hand around her beads. He knew he should cut it out of his psyche, but to do that would be a betrayal of all he was.

Instead, he went back to the front lines, trying to throw himself fully into his work so that he could just forget her. That had led to finding Echo, at least. A man he had been certain was dead, who had been through hell itself, had been brought home. Jesse and Rex had taken to trying to rehabilitate him in their spare time, because Fives… Fives just couldn't bring himself to push when it was needed. So they let him handle the comfort portion, and followed Kix's guidelines for what was needed. 

Now, as Anakin made his way to the Chancellor's quarters, he tried not to think too much about that last time on Coruscant, tried not to prod at the ache in his mind where Ahsoka's vibrant energy had once inhabited. He'd only known her less than three full years, for stars' sake! It wasn't like Obi-Wan. Granted, that bond had been badly damaged by Obi-Wan's deceit…

…and yet it had never truly, fully severed anymore than Ahsoka's had, despite Anakin believing him to be dead. It had felt just like this, the dark wall keeping him from sensing Obi-Wan.

He shook his head, and let himself into the personal quarters that the Chancellor kept, his mind drifting over that darkness once more as he did, because the Chancellor had given him deep condolences on the loss of his promising young student. He remembered Palpatine taking the time to reassure him that all things happened in their own time, and perhaps it was for the best, given the suspicions that would linger about her.

His thoughts stopped in their tracks as he felt, ever so briefly, pain and misery welling up and breaking through the wall before vanishing again.

Snips was hurting? He could have sworn she was so very close in that moment, yet the wall was as solid as ever now.

How could she block him so completely if that agony was hers?

"Anakin, I did not expect you so soon," the Chancellor greeted as he came into the atrium.

Was it Anakin's paranoia creeping up, or did his friend look displeased at his arrival?

"I have a soldier that needed Jedi healers; he may have information that he doesn't realize he's holding," Anakin said in his most casual voice possible, taking in his full impressions instead of disregarding it. After finding a man that had been dead, after being deceived by his master, and after the Council so fully betrayed him and Ahsoka, he was learning not to ignore his instincts so much. After all, the world was even more rotten than he'd thought when he was still a slave in name, not just practice.

The man did look as if he had been interrupted. He looked as tired as ever, but there was something lingering something… not quite right, but Anakin couldn't place why.

"Ahh, well, that might prove quite useful, my young friend. It's so kind of you to take the time and come to see me," Palpatine soothed in his avuncular voice. Anakin half-shrugged, giving a disarming smile. 

"I know you're a busy man, but you've been a strong mentor," Anakin said. "As well as my friend." He wasn't purposefully testing Palpatine, but his senses were fully turned outward.

Why couldn't he ever really feel anything of Palpatine in the Force? He generally could gather something of an intuition about most people when he listened. Was it just because Palpatine was that controlled, so aware of the burden on his shoulders? He'd aged so much recently, like the strain was wearing him down more and more.

Then again, who wasn't wearing down?

"I do try, Anakin. I see great things in your future, and you continue to meet all of my expectations," Palpatine said, smiling at him.

That was just the way he expected Palpatine to handle him, building him up, supporting him in ways that the Jedi never did. He found himself relaxing, just a little, pushing off his paranoia and that burst of pain as his hyperactive imagination, borne from recent stresses. 

"Do tell your soldier that I will have him in mind as he is in care of your healers," Palpatine continued, a note of dismissal edging into his words. "It is good to see you, but I have tasks I must complete, for the better future we all hope for, Anakin."

"Of course," the Jedi Knight said, as something twitched in his awareness, bringing back the edge of paranoia. He left, though, and headed for Padmé's apartment. It wasn't that far away, and he'd be more at peace there to question things than he would at the Temple.

+++

_The wall kept him out, forced him back away from what lay within._

_Anakin Skywalker rarely let anything balk him, and he kept_ pushing _until there was a tiny crack in the wall._

_He was immediately assaulted with screams that he'd heard in his nightmares, screams of his padawan in pain and terror alike. The scream shrilled higher…_

…and Anakin was thrown out of his meditative trance by the cry of a convor on the landing pad. That he could hear it through the shielding but not the traffic struck him almost as odd as the fact it was almost exactly the same pitch and sound as Ahsoka's voice in his mind.

He rose to pace, his eye leaving the convor as he tried to place where Ahsoka could possibly be. She had felt so close. His hands flexed repeatedly, before he heard a tapping. Looking up, the convor was scratching at the actual window now, tail switching in agitation as it perched on the fixtures awkwardly.

Anakin blinked.

Was the convor actually immersed in the Force, the way a Jedi appeared to him? 

He focused on the bird, and noticed a very thin string of energy trailing it, one that stretched and went somewhere unseen.

"Force take it," he murmured as every instinct urged him to follow the string, or the bird, or both. He called his lightsaber to him from the table by the couch, and moved to do just that. Maybe it was a fool's errand, but he had so little to go on… and Obi-Wan was always saying the Force moved in mysterious ways.

+++

Ahsoka Tano had known fear many times in her short life. She remembered the fear of the hunt, facing her first akul properly. She recalled the agonizingly long wait to know who lived, who died when the Temple emptied out to Geonosis. So many points in the campaigns she had been a part of had seen her in fear… and she had done her duty regardless.

Even if it had taken time, as when she lost her first command over Ryloth, because she had been so foolish.

She had never known fear that paralyzed her since that moment. She was forged in the fires of war, tempered by compassion that led to always putting duty first.

Now was no different. Even as she struggled against her restraints, against the mind-dulling drugs, she had a clear sense of duty to cut against the fear. She had to escape, had to live, had to reach someone, anyone who would trust her, and tell the truth. 

She didn't stand a chance in hell of doing it, by all conventional wisdom, as she was just an ex-Padawan, and her captor was a Sith. Worse, he was a Sith that had managed to stay hidden right under the noses of several Jedi she had once respected.

But worst of all, her Skyguy, her beloved master, trusted this man more than any other.

Thoughts like that escaped her again as the pain began again, a pain born from lightning and psychic assaults, as he tried, yet again to break her, to make her his own creature, no doubt as a pawn against the Jedi that he so hated. She screamed, a sound of defiance as much as it was her pain escaping her, and continued to fight her fear, and him, with that need to escape.

~You will submit!~ lashed into her on every strike of the electricity.

~Never!~

She gathered the pain, the fear, and her drive to escape, focusing them past the disorientation and threw them out, channeling them down the bond she desperately clung to, no matter how dark the other end was.

+++

Why was he back in the same section of the building as Palpatine's quarters? He had dodged more security measures than the last time he'd broken into a Separatist facility, and his sense of direction could not be fooled. He should be one level down from the man's actual personal quarters.

The thought intruded only once as the convor that had, improbably, settled on his shoulder the instant they'd reached the right level. Anakin wasn't certain what to make of this, except to take what help he could get.

And then his mind was speared, a stabbing consciousness of his padawan, all of the tumult of pure fear and pain intermingled, riding a sense of need. He clutched at his head with the flesh hand, steadying himself on the wall with the bionic one.

The bird made a low, distressed sound in his ear, helping him center. "You're tied to her, somehow. I can see the string of Force energy, even if I don't understand how. But why… how could she be here?" He shifted to hold the bird there, feeling the vibrant energy in the bird burning at his owns senses, driving him. He reached into himself, letting his trust rest in the bird that had warned him twice already of threats in the shape of guards patrolling, and drove his full will along the bond that was his padawan's gift to him, the evidence of her trust in him as a teacher.

She had left the Order. She had not left him, not of her own free will, not with the agony he'd felt since returning to Coruscant. Having that knowledge burned into his heart, Anakin would not be denied the ability to reach her. This physically close, with the strange convor, the Force itself became a blazing conduit between them, shattering the wall.

Her pain, the dull layers over her mind, that she was restrained exploded in his awareness. 

So did the reason why, and Anakin Skywalker felt the same rush of power and need to slay the source that had come over him on Tatooine, to avenge his mother. 

~What he wants. Don't.~

That was Snips, his brave, impossible padawan pulling him back from the edge… and shielding him? Hiding him? No, that was… that was something more, something part of Ahsoka and yet greater than either of them.

~I have to save you.~

~Leaves soon. Enduring… can… will.~

Anakin did not want to listen to her. He wanted to break in there and deal with the traitor now! 

She was trying to soothe his temper back, draining her from fighting the drugs and assault on her mind and body.

~Okay, Snips… but I'm not leaving this building without you.~

+++

She had been right. And he'd been able to evade detection, he was certain, as he managed to cut through a wall into the room she was in.

The image of her bound, showing bodily injury, and too weak to move for herself nearly sent him back into the killing rage, but her hand rested on his face. The marks of electrical burns on her skin, the tatters of her clothing, the filthy condition she was in… all added into the pump that was pushing who knew what through her veins? He wanted to destroy the very man he had thought of as his only real friend for years.

That odd pressure was in his mind, shielding those thoughts, even as he scooped her gently off the table she'd been bound to. The convor launched away, fluttering ahead of them as Anakin got her out of the danger they were both in, the rage simmering inside his soul, feeding the banked power within himself.

Her breathing fluttered once, a gasp of pain and then shallow to the point of barely there, feeding the fear instead of the rage. "Stay with me, Snips!" he commanded, hurrying to get to a speeder so he could get her to the Temple. The Council had to be told no matter what, and he could only pray the Senate kept — "Right, don't be an idiot." He pulled his comm out and spoke quietly into it. "Message, text only, encrypt Angel code, recipient Angel, as follows: Must delay Chancellor as long as possible. Do not let him return home. Explain later."

He made it all the way to the speeder he'd borrowed before his comm chirped, and gave him the answer he needed to hear. Maybe, just maybe, he had time enough to do this. He didn't even notice that the convor had left them, flying away to other tasks.

+++

Vokara Che herself instantly took the Knight and his burden to an exam bay, one with a bacta tank. She and Knight Krieth Nimpur quickly stripped the remnants of clothing away, and set about sterilizing as much of Ahsoka as they could without exacerbating her burns.

"She'll need deep immersion," Vokara said, as her Knight adapted a breather for Togruta needs. 

"No," Ahsoka said weakly, pushing at the Master's hand when the elder woman tried to keep her from sitting up. "I can't. I am the evidence of what my master needs to prove to the Republic."

Anakin did not let the thrill of her claiming him like that be noticed. He really didn't. Instead, he frowned, and added his own hand to her other shoulder, carefully of the heavy burns on the lek near it. "I know what I saw, where I found you—"

"You saw through my eyes, Skyguy. And that level is technically below his residence. He'll deny it. He'll slip away from justice, and murder us both later. Or worse, with you, because he really, really wants you. Half of his attempts to break me was so he could put me back near you, one more tool to use whenever his plan was fully in place!"

Vokara could only listen, as the Jedi warred with the healer inside her. She could feel the Force solidly supporting the young woman, not even fully physically mature, if Vokara was honest with herself. 

"Skywalker, call the Council members here, if you need their authority for whatever the two of you are about to do. I believe Masters Tiin, Billaba, and Yoda are in residence. And before you ask, your man is doing well in his submersion tank. Krieth and I will get Ahsoka fully clean, including a mass anti-toxin, while you do so."

Anakin stared at the Master Healer, notorious for her iron-fist hold on patients in need. If she was going along with Ahsoka's ideas, the Force was being blatant in its wishes.

"Yes, Master. Snips, do what they say, so we can get you there… and once we do, when it goes to hell, because I know it will, you stay out of the fighting!"

"Don't worry, Skyguy. I don't even have a lightsaber," Ahsoka joked, poorly, at him before allowing the pair of women to give her a more thorough cleaning.

+++

It was not unusual for Jedi Masters to visit the Senate, especially in recent years as the crisis and then the war kept them so tangled in Republic affairs. It wasn't even that unusual for them to be accompanied by their armored and armed officers. The Chancellor had been conversing quietly with Mas Amedda when they entered, but then his eyes drew down to them to the way the Iktotchi and Skywalker were shoulder to shoulder, clones on either side of them, with the ancient Grand Master of the Order ahead of them. One of the women walked behind them, with two more clones on either side of her, and a cloaked figure stood between them all.

The Force tingled with a key moment, just out of his ability to see it fully. 

"Beg the pardon of honored Senators, the Jedi Order does!" the small green being said, his voice carrying so clearly everyone without more than a minor focus of the Force. The Chancellor opened his mouth to speak; his voice carried no further than the platform he was on, as his audio pickup was ruthlessly crushed by one of the Jedi.

"The traitor we have known of since the war began has been revealed to us," the Iktotchi said, starting a near riot of whispers and demands.

"My lord?" Mas Amedda asked, quietly, before his eyes were drawn to the smoking remnant of the audio pickup.

"Get me a way to be heard," Palpatine said, his voice a little crueler, a little more grasping in its tones. Amedda fumbled for a remote comm to link with the audio system… and it flew out of his hands, as if knocked free in his haste to get it out.

"Honored Senators, Representatives!" Anakin called. "You all have met me at some point, and you know who I am. You know my padawan was accused of treason just last month, and acquitted when a different culprit was found! What you don't know is that she, my padawan, vanished after the trial, and I have only just recovered her today!" The men stepped aside, and Ahsoka let the hood fall back, revealing bandages protecting the grisly electrocution burns that peppered her skin, especially on her sensitive lekku and montrals.

"I must speak!" Palpatine roared, as the Force closed in around him, trying to push him, to manipulate him, when he was its master!

"Chancellor?" the nearest Senator asked, confused at why the man was growing agitated, why he could not speak normally with his equipment.

"I hear you, Chancellor," Ahsoka said clearly, wearing an amplifier for her voice, which cracked with pain and weakness. "Just as I have heard you as you tried to subvert me. Did you subvert Barriss too? Or was she the work of one of your agents?"

"This is ridiculous!" the man said, his protests carrying barely farther than the five senators and representatives closest to him.

"The child was under suspicion! How can we possibly trust her word? She probably conspired with the other one!" one of these senators said, a known backer of most bills that broadened the Chancellery powers.

"The Jedi have been trying to manipulate the war for their own power and prestige!" another said, but none of the Jedi nor the clone troopers with them tried to fight back as the accusations flew around the chamber. While they did, Ahsoka stepped forward, moving even past Master Yoda, her eyes locked on the man that had authored so much misfortune in his lifetime. She could barely stand on her own, had actually been carried as far as the entryway by one of the men, but as she focused on the Chancellor, her duty stood her in good stead, locking her spine and keeping her upright.

And then the convor swept in, coming to land on her shoulder, long tail looping to the other side of her. 

"No more," she said, her eyes glowing with the power that had kept her alive, kept her unbroken by this man. 

Every single slight and insult Palpatine had not been allowed to answer in his life after his master found him came back, rising to boil under his control. Every failure, every shift in the grand plan, nudged at his leash on his grasp of being the kindly politician they expected to see. 

Skywalker stepped forward then, his voice rising. "You can't have Ahsoka, Chancellor, and you will not have me either," he declared.

The Chosen One, his ultimate gambit, the culmination of all the plans that he had usurped from his master was rejecting him, throwing off the subtle mind tricks employed since the slave had first come to the Temple as a Jedi. It flicked and flayed at the reins Palpatine had been holding , until the Darkness he channeled demanded no less than all of their deaths.

The snapping of control was a palpable thing, lancing through every Force Sensitive in the room, but none more than Ahsoka, who had used the power of the Light to push, to make it reveal itself. She dropped to the floor, with one of the clones moving to shield in front of her, and the other three taking strategic points to protect them both.

It was Anakin that met the attack of lightning that rained down with his lightsaber, suddenly in his hands as he had felt the snap. The other Jedi took up their own weapons, a breath behind him, before the Chancellor was somehow, impossibly moving down to the floor, a red lightsaber snapping into his own hand. Anakin was actually thrown back from the initial assault, but Yoda intervened in the next moment, protecting the Jedi of his line long enough for Anakin to get his footing back. 

The Senate, by and large, began fleeing, save those of stern constitutions for violence, while a few thought to send for the Guards outside… only to find all of them being held back by members of the Jedi units. There was little doubt in the eyes of all the politicians; the Jedi were telling the truth. What each one felt depended on how far into the Chancellor's hold they were, and small battles began to spring up between adherents of the Republic and those who had been promised power by Amedda in the new order of things.

Through the chaos around them, four loyal clone troopers protected the catalyst for it all, with one worried Captain doing his damnedest not to look at her more than the danger around him.

+++

The next time Ahsoka opened her eyes, she saw Yoda watching over her, while a trooper… that was Jesse, she thought, by the feel of him, as she couldn't see his marking from here… guarded the room she was in.

"Asleep you have been, more than three days. Impossible, they say, for Togruta to sleep so long," he said in that gentle, quietly playful voice he used with younglings. It even worked, making her smile briefly, before she took in that his ear had been truncated. That brought her mind back to the fight, and she reached with all her desperate need for the bond.

Anakin's presence was groggy but reassuring before alertness came to him, and she knew he was in motion to get to her. 

Yoda harumphed at the flow in the Force. "Resting, he still should be. Replaced both his arms, this time, Master Che had to."

"Oh no," Ahsoka said. "Master Tiin, and Master Billaba?"

"In bacta, still, both are. Injuries more severe, yes, they were," Yoda told her. "Living, they are."

"And the men?"

"Guard taken carefully; Master Ti, to Kamino, she took them. Our men, mostly uninjured, none severely," he told her. "To you, all of this, we owe thanks for, Padawan Tano." He inclined his head to her deeply. "Believe in trials being comp—"

"NO!" Ahsoka cut him off. "I haven't even been a padawan three full years. I've only been able to learn combat for most of that. Don't take me from Skyguy, Master Yoda; I have too much yet to learn!"

Yoda was smiling as he met her eyes this time. "Wise, you are. Trials, complete, yes, they are, but correct you are. Learning to be done. Senior Padawan, then. With your Knighting later, at a time decided by Skywalker and you." He chuckled as he slipped off the chair he'd been occupying. "Wait too long, do not. Always waiting, my line is."

"Yes, Master Yoda," she said, just before Jesse snapped rigidly to attention, the only warning before Skyguy was in there with her, gloves on both hands now. Neither Ahsoka nor Anakin really noticed as Yoda hobbled out with his stick, not when Anakin was sitting on the bed, wrapping her in the most powerful hug she could remember since that one on Mortis.

"Snips."

"Skyguy," she breathed, closing her eyes again, letting all the lingering pains slip from her mind in the joy of having her master back.

The Order still did not have her full trust, but she was where she needed to be. 

+++

Outside the Temple, a convor made lazy circles in the air, as Light and Dark were reunited. Someday, he would realize the truth of himself. For now, they were two halves of a whole, and the future balance of the Force.

**Author's Note:**

> Notes concerning fannish hive-minding: Zinjadu has been writing a [wonderful fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9365273) with Ahsoka in similar circumstances, but different villain and rescue. When I first had this idea, that story had not yet begun. I had decided against writing this one, because of that fic, but then I had a minor meltdown and required writing therapy. I did contact Zinjadu to let them know I would be posting something similar. Hopefully, it is far enough apart to be worth reading on its own merits.
> 
> Writing notes: While I had the initial idea before Christmas, the actual writing took place in the last 48 hours, in two bursts. It is not properly beta'd, but I need to set it free into the wilds. See again, writing therapy.


End file.
